Coca-Cola, adidas, BA Top Final Olympic Social Scoreboard

LONDON--Coca-Cola, adidas and British Airways (BA) have emerged as the best-performing brands in social media among sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics.

The three brands scored highly in Sociagility’s London 2012 Social Scoreboard, which tracked the social media performance of sponsors using a variety of metrics. The Holmes Report previously published several scoreboard updates in the run-up to the Games.

The final ranking, as of the start of this week, show that Coca-Cola topped the overall ranking, ahead of adidas in second and BA in third spot. The results demonstrate fairly little movement at the top of the scoreboard since the last published ranking, on the eve of the opening ceremony, after considerable changes in the weeks leading up to the Games.

In terms of ‘potential’, a metric that measures engagement and minimises, to some extent, the effects of popularity and fame, there were some interesting findings. Adidas tops this chart, ahead of Cadbury, GE, Coca-Cola, Samsung, P&G and Visa.

It is here the social media battle was most actively fought and, we believe, won,” say Sociagility with regard to the ‘potential’ scores, in its report.

The report also notes that many sponsors ignored social media altogether. In a recent blogpost, the Holmes Report examined this issue in detail, citing an AT Kearney study that suggested sponsors “rarely left the purview of conventional marketing and barely dipped into social media.”

“The opportunity is lost if the social media component of sponsorship activation is carried out in isolation or simply tacked on as an afterthought.,” adds the Sociagility report. “And integration ideally needs to be both conceptual as well as practical.”

The firm points to two sponsors that successfully achieved this level of integration: P&G’s long-running Moms campaign; and EDF’s ‘Energy of the Nation’ programme.

Another brand that has come in for praise is Adidas, for its #takethestage campaign. In the Sociagility report, adidas UK and Ireland marketing director Nick Craggs notes that social media was an integral part of its Olympic communications, via a strategy that focused on “relevance and reactivity” to “bring fans closer to the brand.”